Mr Hush

By: Bob Garrett, Posted: September 05, 2012

The Movie itself:

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space has been called by many the worst film ever made. I can honestly say that after watching Mr. Hush, if both films were compared side by side, we would have a new champion of crap. I honestly have to say that this is the worst movie I have ever seen. It took a superhuman effort from me to get to the end of the movie without turning it off. I can’t believe that someone thought that Mr. Hush was even worthy to film. Let’s just hit the reasons why you should avoid this movie:

The acting: Two of the films leads are played by stuntmen. There is a reason stuntmen don’t act, it’s because they can’t act. Brad Loree, who played Michael Myers in a few of the Halloween films, plays Holland, a man whose wife is killed and daughter is taken by a mysterious stranger. Ten years later, he returns to the town that he lived in and starts up a relationship with a waitress he works with. Unfortunately, she is killed by the stranger and he is held captive in the basement by Mr Hush (Edward X. Young) and his henchman, Stark (Stephen Geoffreys – Evil Ed in the original Fright Night). Another stuntman, Steve Dash, plays Mac, Holland’s boss. The acting in Mr Hush is cringe-worthy. Loree, when he has a moment when he needs to scream, grabs his face and rubs it, while eliciting an absolutely laughable cry of anguish. Young, as the supposed evil Mr Hush, doesn’t know the difference between menacing and over-acting. The rest of the cast is ridiculously awful.

The script: For a movie that advertises itself as a ‘horror slasher’ film, there is no horror and there is no slashing. Big long boring conversations and only 2 people get killed. There is absolutely no build in suspense. In fact, I was hoping the entire cast got killed- but no such luck. The film delivers huge laughs from unbelievably bad dialogue and bad line readings from the actors.

The direction: Mr. Hush is the first film David Lee Madison has ever made-period... and it really shows. He wrote, produced and directed this thing. There is a complete lack of tension to the story. The camerawork looks like the AV club at a nearby high school filmed it. The actors have no direction at all-they appear to just stand around saying their lines. The film builds to a non-climax, and ends with a ridiculous coda. To make things worse, there is an additional clip in the credits (as if they thought you would stay until the end of the film). It features Brian O’Halloran from Clerks as a guy looking for Holland. There is a roadblock and he has to leave his car and walk the three miles to the house. So he’s walking, and walking, and walking…for nearly two minutes. He then stops, says “Oh f***” and you see a rubber mallet come down. The End. Oh wait, you also have an awful song over the closing credits by two past members of Huey Lewis and the News, and neither one is Huey Lewis.

Unless you are an enthusiast of really bad films, I strongly recommend you avoid this stinker at any cost.

Movie Rating: 1/10

The Presentation:

The 1080p, MPEG-4 video codec presentation of Mr. Hush offers a fair transfer, but not much else. Image quality is extremely soft with very little detail, thanks mostly to a moderate amount of artifacting. Skin tones are on the light side. Black levels are not very deep, mostly due to artificial lighting used in production. Some digital artifact is noted during the dream sequence in the forest. Overall, the movie either proves to be a very low budget film or to derive from a very mistreated print. The look of the movie isn't convincing, at least not the high definition aspect.

The DTS-HD 5.1 audio transfer is problematic. The biggest issue is the dialogue. Normal dialogue throughout the film sounds incredibly tinny, but when the characters start screaming at each other abruptly - it gets worse. You hear a distortion on the track that sounds like the equipment used couldn’t handle that volume or pitch. It really became painful to listen to the actors yelling at each other. The rest of the transfer suffers from uncontrollable sound levels during production. Footsteps of someone coming down the stairs sounds like someone is wearing cement blocks. The side channels have no extension of sound outwards. The rear channels are sporadically used for elevating the films score.

Video Rating: 3/10, Audio Rating: 2/10

The Extras:

The extras for Mr. Hush are pretty worthless. The audio commentary with the director and the actor who plays Mr. Hush is funny because they actually believe this is a good movie. And Edward Young has this irritating habit of name dropping (“my mentor, blah blah blah…” and “I borrowed this lens from blah blah blah…” throughout the whole commentary.

Introduction by director David Lee Madison and Brian O'Halloran (Clerks, Mallrats)
Outtakes / Bloopers
"Mr. Hush" Music Video from the band "Visitor”
Audio Commentary from director David Lee Madison & Edward X. Young
Original Theatrical Trailers

Extras Rating: 4/10

Overall:

Mr. Hush is a horror movie that not even die-hard horror fans will enjoy. The Blu-ray isn't very good and the movie is even less interesting. Don't have much to say here, other than this is one to avoid.

Overall Rating: 3/10

Disc Details

Distributor:
Horizon Movies

Release Date:
August 07, 2012

Tech. Specs:

Region A
BD 25

Video:

1080p
MPEG-4 Video Codec
2.20:1 Aspect Ratio

Audio:

DTS-HD 5.1
DTS-HD 2.0

Subtitles:
None

Rating:
Not Rated

Genre:
Horror

Runtime:
88 Minutes

Features:

Introduction by director David Lee Madison and Brian O'Halloran
Outtakes / Bloopers
"Mr. Hush" Music Video from the band "Visitor”
Audio Commentary from director David Lee Madison & Edward X. Young
Original Theatrical Trailers

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